💬 Winter mornings on our balcony are the only time I drink tea slowly

From about mid November there's a week where Hyderabad mornings go cold. Proper cold, 14 or 15 degrees. That's my favourite week of the whole year. I wait for it like other people wait for Eid shopping. I make tea at 6:30 before anyone else is up and take it out to our balcony in Red Hills. Shawl, socks, the cup in both hands. The rest of the year I drink tea standing in the kitchen in 2 minutes. There's fog over the road some days. The milk van, the man who sells flowers near the mosque, the school autos. Everybody looks smaller in the fog. Everyone's walking a bit slower, hands in their pockets. The neighbour aunty comes out at 7 in a monkey cap and waves at me. We've never spoken properly. Just the wave. In summer we don't wave. It's too hot to be nice to anyone. My husband thinks I'm dramatic about it. He's from Nagpur. He says this isn't winter, this is a slightly cool day. Fine. But it's our winter, and it's short, and I'm going to enjoy every one of those 10 mornings. Last year I missed most of it because of a fever. Spent the whole cold week in bed and was furious. This year I've already taken out the shawls and washed them. My mother laughed at me on the phone. What's yours? The one thing about Hyderabad winter that you wait for every year? Mine is the tea, the fog and the waving aunty. In that order. Maybe the aunty first. Forecast says it starts cooling around the 20th. I've told my family not to plan anything for those mornings. They all think I'm joking about this. I am not joking, not even a little.

Shawl, socks and the cup in both hands, I can see your balcony in Red Hills from here. For me, the week at 14 degrees is when I take my father's old woollen cap out of the cupboard, which my mother says smells of camphor.

Sweaters, for me. I have 4 good ones that sit in a suitcase for 11 months of the year. The day it drops below 18 I take them all out and my wife says it's not that cold. It's that cold. Wore my grey one to office last December and 3 people asked if I was going to Shimla. I wore it again the next day anyway. Got my money's worth.